“Give everyone what you owe him: If you owe taxes, pay taxes; if revenue, then revenue; if respect, then respect; if honor, then honor. Let no debt remain outstanding, except the continuing debt to love one another.” (Romans 13:7-8)

Kierkegaard paraphrases St. Paul: “Owe no man anything, what you have borrowed from him, what you have promised him, what he rightfully may demand of you in return. If possible, owe no man anything, no obligation, no service, no sympathy in joy or sorrow, no leniency in judging, no help in life, no advice in dangers, no sacrifice, even the most difficult – no, in all these things owe no man anything. But nevertheless be in debt which amid all this you have by no means desired to get out of and before God have by no means been able to pay off, the debt of love to one another….Usually we think the task is to get out of debt, whatever the debt is, a money debt, a debt of honor, a debt involving a promise – in short, whatever the debt is the task is always rather to get out of debt, the sooner the better. But here it should be the task, therefore an honor, to be in debt.” (Works of Love)

Now I must say that I find this idea unsettling. I do not like to be in debt to anyone. I do not like to be beholden to anyone. It is much easier to believe that “It is more blessed to give than to receive”! My egotistical nature wants to be self-sufficient, independent, and not to be in debt. I was raised by parents who warned me about getting into debt. There was a pride in being able to pay your bills when they were due and not past due. But such an attitude can keep us from feeling any obligation to others. We feel that we do not owe them anything, so we keep our distance from them. Such distancing can prevent us from getting to know them, and can protect us from caring for them.

There are some people we feel obligated to repay the debt of love we owe them. We may feel that we are in debt to our parents, because our parents have loved us first. They brought us into the world, they cared for us in infancy, they nurtured us, they fed and clothed us, and supported us through our childhood and youth as we went to school, and matured into adulthood. We have photos of ourselves in their arms, and by their sides as we grew up. We may have wanted to repay them for their love. But love cannot be repaid. To think of love in this way is to compare it with a bookkeeping relationship – a bill is submitted and it must be paid; if love was shown to us, it must be repaid with love. We cannot think of coming into debt by receiving love. Sometimes needy parents feel that their children owe them some consideration as they age. Sometimes we may feel that our children owe us. But St. Paul is not talking here of repaying the debt of love. There is no way we can repay, for loving others is a debt that can never be satisfied. It is in loving others that we come into a debt that can never be calculated.

Why are we obligated to love others? “This is how we know what love is: Jesus Christ laid down his life for us. And we ought to lay down our lives for our brothers….This is how God showed his love among us: He sent his one and only Son into the world that we might live through him…Dear friends, since God so loved us, we also ought to love one another.”

There is never a time when we can say that we have fulfilled our debt to love one another. If Christ is in us, then his love is lived through us. We can never stop loving somebody and say, ‘I have loved enough.’ Just as there is never a time when we can say that God has loved us enough and he does not have to love us anymore. God loves us to the end and beyond. As John records Jesus’s attitude to his disciples at the Last Supper: “Having loved his own who were in the world, he loved them to the last.” He loves us at our worst. He loves the world in its messiness, its rebellion, its rejection of him. He loves those who hate him. We can do no less. We have an infinite debt to love one another.

Does this mean that others have a blank check on our love? No. Does this mean that there are no limits to what others can draw on our love? No. We are called to love our neighbor ‘as ourselves’, not more than ourselves. To love others more than yourself would mean that you would be unwilling to refuse them anything they asked, even if you think it is harmful. To love others more than yourself would be to put them on a pedestal as someone to be idolized. That would be blasphemy. It is not love to indulge human weakness, or a demand, or blackmail that love will be withheld. Love for others does not mean fulfilling all their desires and needs. Our love for others is determined by what would constitute proper care and prevent possible harm. That may mean denying requests for money from an alcoholic, or drug addict, who would use the funds for their habit. It may mean confronting a spouse who is obsessing about an issue that is consuming him, or abusive in their behavior.

Love for others does not require us to beggar ourselves. We must care for ourselves, and maintain ourselves so that we can continue to love others. We can only love others if we have something to give. Love may require sacrifice, even self-denial, but it does not mean being reduced to having to depend upon others because we have exhausted our own resources in trying to help others. Governments that overspend in order to provide welfare benefits have to overtax or borrow to avoid being accused of lack of love or concern are irresponsible.

We are able to love others because the Author of our life is also the Source of love in us. God has loved us first. God is the origin and source of the love in us which we are called to share with others. We can only love because we are loved. We cannot love from our own resources, on our own initiative. We are given love to give to others. Therefore we can pay this debt from God’s bank of love. He gives us a line of credit on his love. We can draw on it all we want to give love to others.

Jesus said, “Love one another. As I have loved you, so you must love one another.” Just as Jesus drew on the love of his Father to love others, so we can draw on the love of Jesus to love others. This is the difference between a disciple of Christ and a humanist ethical person. The believer in Christ does not rely on his own strength to love others. He calls upon the empowering of the Holy Spirit. “God has poured out his love into our hearts by the Holy Spirit whom he has given us.”

In what currency is the debt of love to be paid? It is the currency Paul describes in 1 Corinthians 13:4,5 – “Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. It is not rude, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs.”

Practically speaking, it means that whomever we meet in this life, whomever we have occasion to relate to, we, as the followers of Christ, acknowledge that we have a debt to pay to them – to love them. We owe them, whomever they are, however casual the acquaintance, the obligation of our love. We can never say that we owe them nothing. This attitude characterized Jesus. It is why people were struck by him, were drawn to him. He treated people with love. It did not matter who they were: a servant, a prostitute, a nobleman, a foreigner, a rich man or a poor man. He treated them all the same – with love. We are expected to do no less.

GUIDE FOR REFLECTION AND DISCUSSION

1. Why is it an honor to be in debt to love our neighbor?

2. Why is it easier to believe that it is more blessed to give than to receive?

3. How does the belief that we do not owe others anything distance ourselves from them?

4. What people have you wanted to repay for their love? What is the danger of comparing relationships with bookkeeping?

5. Read 1 John 3:16;4:9,11. Why are we obligated to love others?

6. How does God’s example prevent us from claiming that we have loved enough?

7. What does the distinction to love our neighbor ‘as ourselves’ and not more than ourselves mean to you?

8. “We must care for ourselves, and maintain ourselves so that we can continue to love others.” How does this affect how we can love others who selfishly demand more than we can handle?

9. How can we draw on God’s bank of love?

10. How does the example of Jesus affect how we love others?

“Love never fails.” (1 Corinthians 13:8) Divine love stands forever, for God is love, and only God is eternal. Everything that is created is contingent, dependent, temporary, mortal. Therefore only love from God, love that is given by God, love that partakes of the character of God, can never fail.

It is this love, the sharing of God’s love with his children that never fails. If we want our love to never fail, then we will want our love to be drawn from God’s love. When God is the source of our love, then our love cannot be defeated by anything.

Love is permanent. “Many waters cannot quench love.” (Song of Songs) Love cannot be drowned or destroyed. This love is eternal. This is what William Penn (1644-1718) meant when he prayed: “Life is eternal, and love is immortal, and death is only an horizon, and an horizon is nothing save the limit of our sight. Lift us up, strong Son of God, that we may see further, cleanse our eyes that we may see more clearly, and draw us closer to yourself that we may know ourselves to be nearer to our loved ones who are with you.”

Love never fails – it is a comfort and strength when we are threatened with the evils of life: despondency, terror, anxiety, and uncertainty. Love is the spring in the desert which never fails, which can be relied upon to sustain you. When this love is expressed it never fails the test, it never runs out, it can be relied upon.

To illustrate love’s permanence Paul contrasts it with three gifts prized most highly by the Corinthians. Prophecy is a clear word from God uttered under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit by prophets and preachers. It is extremely valuable. We all need to hear the Word of God. Yet prophecies will cease when we are ushered into the presence of God. Prophecy will no longer be necessary.

The same can be said of the gift of tongues. They will one day be stilled. There will be no need of a prayer or evangelistic language to communicate with God or about the wonders of God when you are in his immediate presence. The gift of tongues can be a private ecstatic experience. The gift of love is meant to help us relate to others. Love is the true and fullest manifestation of the Spirit’s power. Jesus said, “By this all men will know that you are my disciples, if you love one another.”

The gift of words of knowledge will pass away. In heaven our knowledge will be of no value. When we are with God and know him who is love, we will not need the gift of knowledge for we shall be experiencing reality. Love is greater than all other achievements. Love never fails when the value of other achievements fades. All accumulated knowledge will be unnecessary, out-of-date and redundant. No amount of talent which we may prize in this life, which the world values and rewards, can compare with love.

Love is superior to prophecies, tongues and knowledge. They are partial, and love is perfection. Even the most sophisticated knowledge we attain on earth is partial. The more we learn, the more we recognize how little we know. It is the same with prophecy. God reveals to us only those things we need to know. In this life we never have a complete understanding of his will. But one day we will enter into a fuller revelation – “when perfection comes.” This is the goal and aim of all human experience. It is the end of all things, the fulfillment of God’s purpose for us and the universe. When that happens and God’s will is perfectly done, then all this world’s partial achievements will fall away, inconsequential before God’s final order.

The same point can be made in the contrast between childhood and adulthood. “When I was a child, I talked like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child. When I became a man, I put childish ways behind me.” The way a child thinks is contrasted with the way an adult thinks. When he matured he repudiated his childishness. The contrast is between this life and the next. Certain things valuable in this life have no place in the next. Some things remain permanently valuable.

To underline his reasoning he changes to the subject of vision. Our vision here and now is partial. It is very much like looking at things in a mirror. Mirrors in those days were normally made of polished metal. They gave only a poor reflection. In such a mirror you could only see obscurely, in a distorted fashion. At best we see a reflection. We do not see accurately. But when the Lord returns for us and ushers in the new creation, we will see clearly, as face to face. Our vision will be perfect.

In other words, in the present age our knowledge is partial. It is part of life that we struggle to attain more complete knowledge by the slow and laborious processes of learning. But we never attain complete knowledge in this life. In the age to come it will be different. We shall know as we have been fully known by God. God’s knowledge of us is complete. There is nothing about us that God does not know.

The apostle John epitomized this never-failing love. He became known as the “apostle of love.” When he wrote his Gospel he referred to himself in the third-person as “the disciple whom Jesus loved,” in the Upper Room, at the foot of the Cross, at the empty tomb, and in Galilee after the resurrection. When he wrote his first epistle he described love as the central feature of God and Christian believers: “Dear friends, let us love one another, love comes from God. Everyone who loves has been born of God and knows God. Whoever does not love does not know God, because God is love.” Like Paul, he contrasted such love with the passing attractions of this life: “Do not love the world or anything in the world. If anyone loves the world, the love of the Father is not in him….The world and its desires pass away, but the man who does the will of God lives forever.”

There is much in this world to love. It is so easy to be seduced by the spirit of the world into desiring those things which promise satisfaction, but in reality are ephemeral. Too many times we can choose to put our preoccupations before our relationships. We can become obsessed with the tasks, with the activities, that feed our egos. Our goals can control us. In life we make choices about what we value. We choose what is most important to us. We can choose to love the world and its desires, but it will pass away. Jesus came that we might receive God’s love, and learn to love one another as he loved us. This love will never fail. It will never pass away. Choose love – the love of God – the love of others – the love of Christ. It alone is permanent.

Prayers:

O Love most powerful, strengthen me. O Love most sweet, let me taste of your goodness. O Love most dear, let me live for you alone. O Love most faithful, comfort and support me. O Love most companionable, accompany all my deeds. O Love most victorious, persevere with me to the end, for your own name’s sake. (Gertrude of Helfta 1256-1302)

Let me walk in the way you love, O God. Let me love you for yourself. Let me love you in all things. Let me taste the sweetness of your love and let it work its beauty in me, until I love with that divine love with which you love me; through Christ our Lord. (Gertrude More 1606-33)

Lord, fill us with the joy of your great love; let our minds meditate on it, let our tongues speak of it, let our hearts love it, let our minds preach it, let our souls hunger for it, and let our whole being desire it, until we enter into your glory and see you face to face. (Anselm of Canterbury 1033-1109)

GUIDE FOR REFLECTION AND DISCUSSION

1. Why does love have to be Divine for it to be permanent?
2. Compare Song of Songs 6:7 and William Penn’s prayer. What do they say to you?
3. How is love more permanent than prophecy?
4. How is love more permanent than the gift of tongues?
5. How is love more permanent than knowledge?
6. Read 1 Corinthians 13:11. What does the contrast between childhood and adulthood, this life and the next have to teach us about love?
7. Read 1 Corinthians 13:12. What does the comparison of ‘now’ and ‘then’ seeing and knowing tell us about loving others?
8. How does the realization that we are ‘fully known’ help us to love?
9. Read 1 John 2:15,17. How do we avoid loving the world or anything in the world?
10. How do we choose to make loving others important to us?

Marie Kawthar Daouda is a Lecturer in French at Oriel College, Oxford University. Born and raised in Morocco in a bilingual French and Moroccan Arabic family she enrolled in the prestigious Lycée Henri-IV in Paris at 17 and completed her doctorate in French and Comparative Literature at the Sorbonne. Her just published book, NOT YOUR VICTIM: How Our Obsession with Race Entraps and Divides Us, deserves to be read by all of us concerned about current events and education. Her thesis is that “the narrative according to which all the evil in the world is the result of the involvement of the white Western man is infantilizing, historically erroneous, and nurtures the very prejudices it claims to fight. It is culturally divisive, and valorizes victimhood above individual and collective agency. Moreover, it entertains the idea that members of ethnic minorities can only succeed and thrive if and when white people express their regret for the colonial past.”

The call to ‘decolonize’ history by attributing evils of the past on former white supremacists and seeking reparations and blame to create guilt on Europeans and North Americans reveals ignorance and a condescending attitude towards the Global South. Bemoaning the alleged victimhood of the colored races and putting them in the category of the oppressed only serves to assert the moral superiority of the left-leaning Western liberal elite. Rousseau’s view of the Noble Savage obscures the realities of slave-owning African and Asian cultures. The Global South has never been a utopia. The transatlantic trade appears as the original sin of the West, with no regard to the long history of the slave trade in Africa by Africans, or to the enslavement of white people throughout history. The toppling of statues in the USA and the UK was not about history but about present political and social issues. The wish to destroy symbols of the past is rooted in the need to scapegoat something in order to legitimize the passage into a new era. How can we say we are good? How can we signal that we are not racist? Throw our sins on a statue, of course, then have that statue thrown into a river. The architectural history of the West is full of echoes of the past that cannot, and will not, be made comfortable to everyone. No era in history is perfect. The past is a violent place, an ‘uncomfortable’ realization for some. Some people feel threatened by visual traces of our history. What will our heirs feel about our generation? Will they judge us and cancel us too?

Proponents of critical race theory encourage self-depreciation in order to gain popularity. Robin Di Angelo writes in White Fragility, “White identity is inherently racist. To be less white is to be less racially oppressive. To be less white is to be open to, interested in, and compassionate toward the racial realities of people of color.” The sacrifice of Western culture on the altar of guilt about our racial and imperial past ends up being just as racist as any historical crime it seek to expiate.

The progressive culture wishes to see everything in terms of tensions between the oppressor and the oppressed. Nowadays victimhood is the spirit of the age that seems to grasp young adults and throw them into fits of rage on TikTok, around statues, or facing protests of trans-exclusionary radical feminists. The feeling of victimhood is contagious, and just like hysteria, it is likely to be mainly in your head, and to get better once you accept that you are unhappy, not sick. Race occupies a special category among the victimhood labels. It is immutable.

Cultural levels in education have been lowered in the name of inclusion. The progressive left, wishes to fabricate equality by engineering an artificial equality of outcome. We must all be the same. We are now expected to be as mediocre as everyone else. Imagine growing up surrounded by the lullabies of white guilt, telling you that everything you do as a white person, is inherently evil, conditioned by centuries of evil, and bound to perpetuate evil; and that all you can do is apologize and turn your life into a long string of reparations for the sins of your forefathers.

Secular thought is unable to address the problem of evil without reverting to pre-Christian mechanisms of scapegoating. To a Christian, and to a Christian society, the horrors of life were made to make sense by the belief that God himself went through each and every one of them to set us free from the fear of death, the desire for revenge, and the tyranny of envy. All the ethical norms that govern modern liberal democracies, even the very idea of human rights and human dignity, bear deep within them that trace of a loving intelligence that found no other way to tell its creatures about its love for them than to take human flesh and die.

The best way to put an end to the endless grievances of victimhood culture is to remind ourselves that life is good. What is the point in living in an ethnically diverse country if everyone is expected to have the same view that everything is a power struggle, and that nothing means anything at all. People in the West are starved for meaning. The victimhood narrative makes an attempt at filling a religious void. The sense of meaning is essential to happiness. For Pascal, that wish for happiness, which he saw as a wish for the knowledge of God, is impossible to forego. Our Western culture traces a quest for the only thing that could ever satisfy a human heart: the truth of divine, sacrificial love, for each and every one of us. Christianity alone teaches us that no one is blameless, yet everyone is priceless in the eyes of a God who died for love. The peace so many of us yearn for can only be found through an individual encounter with the only spotless victim.

I have not done justice to Marie’s narrative and commend you read the 162 pages. It is a rich response to many of our current political and social conflicts.

“Love knows no limit to its endurance, no end to its trust, no fading of its hope; it can outlast anything. It is, in fact, the one thing that still stands when all else is fallen.” (1 Corinthians 13:7, J.B.Phillips)

Paul is indicating “an active, vigorous endurance, not a passive, resigned acceptance of all that happens. It describes the soldier in a keenly contested conflict who battles on undismayed. He does not allow the difficulties of the moment to rob him of strength and purpose; he fights on unflinchingly. So it is with love. Love’s endurance is a positive acceptance of life with all its difficulties, not a passive acquiescence in things as they are. Love does more than put up with life’s hardship; it grows and develops as it struggles against them. Love sees problems positively – as valuable tests that refine it and proves its worth.” (Leon Morris, Testaments of Love)

Love is not just grimly putting up with a difficult relationship or situation, enduring it, persevering with it because you think it is the right thing to do; it is approaching the relationship or situation as a mission to be accomplished, an objective to be reached, a challenge to be conquered. Perseverance has the backbone of courage. Love enables us to have the courage to endure and succeed in the face of all that is painful. Courage is the inner power to resist the painful experiences of life by facing up to the evil that attacks us, and not surrendering.

I saw this courage in my mother-in-law who devotedly nursed her husband, suffering from multiple sclerosis, for over twenty years.

Jesus said, “He who stands firm [endures] to the end will be saved.” Jesus, the incarnation of the love of God, endured to the end. He was courageous in the face of torture, agony, betrayal, rejection, and death. He did not seek to escape from persecution, and injustice. He set his face toward Jerusalem with the knowledge that he would go through the Cross to get to the Resurrection and the fulfillment of his salvation purpose.

We are called to face our difficulties in the same manner. When we seek to follow him and be his disciples we can likewise draw on his courageous love to persevere in the face of suffering, because we see beyond the trials to the victory. At the end of each letter to the seven churches in Asia, Jesus promises: “To him who overcomes, I will give the right to …eat from the tree of life, which is in the paradise of God…will not be hurt at all by the second death….I will give authority over the nations….I will never blot out his name from the book of life but will acknowledge his name before my Father and his angels…I will make a pillar in the temple of my God….I will write on him my new name…I will give the right to sit with me on my throne.”

John Chrysostom calls perseverance “a fortress that is never taken, a harbor that knows no storms, the queen of virtues, the foundation of right actions, peace in war, calm in tempest, security in plots,” and neither the violence of man nor the powers of the evil one can injure it. It is the quality which keeps a man on his feet with his face to the wind. It is the virtue which can transmute the hardest trial into glory because beyond the pain it sees the goal.

“Be on your guard; stand firm in the faith; be men of courage, be strong. Do everything in love.” Love without strength is mere sentimentality. Strength without love can become aggressiveness that rides rough-shod over others. The combination of the two is a twofold cord which cannot be broken. We are called to be men and women of courage, to be strong, to do everything in love. What a high calling this is. To be a Christian in these terms is to be someone of consequence, someone who will accomplish something important. It is a noble calling, of heroic dimensions. There is nothing wimpy about it. Love that always perseveres resonates with strength.

“Be strong and courageous” is the exhortation of Moses to Joshua, accompanied by the promise, “the Lord your God goes with you; he will never leave you or forsake you.” Love is strong and courageous because God goes with us, and will never forsake us. We are not alone. God the Omnipotent, the Almighty, is with us.

The image is a military one. The core values of the United States Marine Corps are Honor, Courage, and Commitment. Those are also the core values of the Christian. We are committed to love of God and neighbor. We honor that commitment by having the courage to continue to love when the going gets tough, when life is difficult, when everything seems to be against us, when we are tempted to quit, when people let us down, and God seems to be absent. Edgar Guest once wrote:

When things go wrong, as they sometimes will

When the road you’re trudging seems all up hill

When funds are low, and the debts are high

And you want to smile, but you have to sigh

When care is pressing you down a bit

Rest if you must, but don’t you quit.

Success is failure turned inside out

The silver tint of clouds of doubt

And you never can tell how close you are

It may be near when it seems so far

So stick to the fight when you’re hardest hit

It’s when things seem worse

That you must not quit.

Nathaniel Fick, in One Bullet Away: The Making of a Marine Officer, recounted how the stress of continuous action in Afghanistan and Iraq, under adverse and deadly circumstances led some officers to avoid further action because they were exhausted. Their commanding officer chastised them for transferring their own fatigue onto troops who were capable of more than they knew. “You are tired, and those Marines are capable of more than they know.” We can make excuses for ourselves so that we can under-perform in the battles of life. We are capable of more than we know when we are put to the test. All too often the battles are lost because we give up loving too soon. Dartmouth graduate Fick writes that he was drawn to the infantry “where courage still counts. Being a Marine was not about money for graduate school or learning a skill; it was a rite of passage in a society becoming so soft and homogenized that the very concept was often sneered at.”

Love always perseveres in order to avoid the dishonor of letting someone else down who is depending on us, who believes in us, for whom we are the hands and heart of Christ. Love does not walk away from commitments when it would be easy and reasonable to do so. Love endures to the end. The world has a lot of starters but very few finishers. Love finishes the race. Love does not give up. Love does not quit. Love perseveres in the battle against evil because it wants to win the victory.

Stand up, stand up for Jesus, the trumpet call obey;

Forth to the mighty conflict in this his glorious day,

Ye that are men now serve him against unnumbered foes;

Let courage rise with danger, and strength to strength oppose.

Stand up, stand up for Jesus, the strife will not be long;

This day the noise of battle, the next the victor’s song;

To him who overcometh a crown of life shall be;

He with the King of glory shall reign eternally.

(George Duffield, Jr.)

GUIDE FOR REFLECTION AND DISCUSSION

1. How do J.B. Phillips’ and Leon Morris’s descriptions of love compare with popular conceptions such as ‘liquid love’ or love as a feeling?

2. How does love differ from grim duty?

3. “Perseverance has the backbone of courage.” Give an example from your own experience?

4. What is the connection between ‘love that endures to the end’ and salvation?

5. What does Jesus promise the overcomer?

6. How can you avoid sentimentality, on the one hand, and aggressiveness on the other?

7. Do you think that the core values of a Christian are Honor, Courage, and Commitment? Explain.

8. How do you fight the temptation to give up loving too soon.

9. How do you keep going, keep persevering, when the sensible thing seems to be to quit?

10. How has God demonstrated his love that perseveres?

When I used to play tennis each Friday morning, I always hoped my game would improve. When I was younger I used to play rugby football for a team that didn’t always win, but we hoped every time we ran out on the field that we would be victorious. I don’t think that I could play a sport if I had no hope of doing well.

Love always hopes because love sees possibilities where none seems to exist. Love always hopes because love never despairs. Love is not dependent on the fulfillment of immediate expectations. Love takes the long term point of view. Love will not give up on others. Love does not give up on God’s purpose. Love keeps us hopeful, in all situations, against all evidence, because hope “is stored up for you in heaven.”

Hope is defined as “Desire accompanied by expectation of or belief in fulfillment…to desire with expectation of obtainment…to expect with confidence.”

• “When we are trapped in a tunnel of misery, hope points to the light at the end.

• When we are overworked and exhausted, hope gives us fresh energy.

• When we are discouraged, hope lifts our spirits.

• When we are tempted to quit, hope keeps us going.

• When we lose our way and confusion blurs our destination, hope dulls the edge of panic.

• When we struggle with a crippling disease or a lingering illness, hope helps us persevere beyond the pain.

• When we fear the worst, hope brings reminders that God is still in control.

• When we must endure the consequences of bad decisions, hope fuels our recovery.

• When we find ourselves in financial difficulty, hope tells us that we still have a future.

• When we are forced to sit back and wait, hope gives us the patience to trust.

• When we feel rejected and abandoned, hope reminds us we’re not alone…we’ll make it.

• When we say our final farewell to someone we love, hope in the life beyond gets us through our grief.” (Charles Swindoll, Hope Again)

How can love always hope when the situation seems hopeless? How can you continue to love when your alcoholic husband is abusive? How can you continue to love when your son or daughter rejects your faith and all the values you taught them to respect? How can you continue to love God when an incurable disease is destroying your loved one? How can we continue to love when prospects in this life seem hopeless?

The answer is that love’s source is in God. Love’s hope is not just wishful thinking. Love’s hope is not just unrealistic expectations. Love’s hope finds its confidence in God’s eternal plan which is beyond human understanding. So Paul prays for those he loves: “May the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace as you trust in him, so that you may overflow with hope by the power of the Holy Spirit.”

“Hope looks beyond a cure for disease, a solution for a problem, an escape from pain, to an assurance from God that life has point and meaning in spite of disease, problems, and pain. Hope looks to the promise of the final victory of Jesus Christ over all that hurts and kills. This is the hope that gives us courage to praise today and face tomorrow with expectancy even when we do not expect the problem to be solved.” (Lewis Smedes, Love Within Limits)

How do we draw on that kind of hope? It comes from being filled with the Spirit. We ask for the gift of the Spirit which Jesus came to give us. We open our hearts and minds to receive that which we need, when all things seem to be hopeless and we are tempted to despair. We believe that God who loves us, will give us the hope we need, to sustain us.

“Hope does not disappoint us because God has poured out his love into our hearts by the Holy Spirit whom he has given us.” We can hope because we have received the love of God in Christ who died for us. God demonstrated his own love for us in that while we were yet sinners, and there seemed to be no hope for us changing or being changed, Christ died for us. God poured that redemptive love into our hearts by his Holy Spirit to give us hope.

Simon Peter is a case in point. Jesus warned Simon, “Satan has asked to sift you as wheat. But I have prayed that your faith may not fail.” In so many instances in our lives, Satan tries to sift us like wheat, by attacking our love so that we lose hope. Jesus is still interceding for us that our faith will not fail. Peter tried to brazen his way through by declaring that he was ready for anything, even to go to prison and to death for Jesus. Jesus deflated his balloon by warning him that before the night was out he would deny three times that he knew him. After this happened Peter remembered what Jesus had said, “And he went out and wept bitterly.”

You can imagine his despair. This strong, boastful fisherman had disgraced himself and let his Master down. The shame and regret must have been terrible to bear. What hope would he have to be able to put things right. Jesus had been crucified. There was no way he could repair what he had done. There was no light at the end of the tunnel. He would have to live with his denial the rest of his life. Satan had won. His faith had failed.

Yet, the impossible happened. There was life beyond death. Mary Magdalene, Mary the mother of James, and Salome, were told by the angel in the empty tomb to “Go, tell his disciples, and Peter.” Jesus especially wanted Peter to know that he was going ahead of him into Galilee where he would see him again.

When he heard this message Peter began to hope again. The day came when he was fishing and Jesus appeared. In an historic meeting he restored Peter to his mission after asking him three times, “Simon son of John, do you truly love me?” Peter replied three times, “Yes, Lord, you know that I love you.” That love for Jesus gave him hope when all seemed to be lost.

It is not surprising that when Peter came to write his letter to Christian believers, he began by witnessing to the source of his hope. “Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ! In his great mercy he has given us new birth into a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead, and into an inheritance that can never perish, spoil or fade – kept in heaven for you.”

Peter knew he was loved by God. The Holy Spirit had poured God’s love into his heart despite his failures. That love inspired his love for Jesus and others. The resurrection of Jesus confirmed its reality and gave him new hope. That hope depended not on this world but in the reality of an eternal inheritance. The love that hopes sees possibility which unbelief cannot see. The love that hopes does not require answers and solutions in this life. Love continues to hope beyond the present into the future and into eternity, where all will be revealed in the last time. This love is willing to wait, to accept, to be patient, to hope for all things to be resolved, not now, but in the last time. It is this hope, poured into our hearts by the Holy Spirit, which will not disappoint us. Thanks be to God.

GUIDE FOR REFLECTION AND DISCUSSION

1. What is your definition of hope?

2. How can you continue to hope when your situation seems hopeless?

3. How does love give you a positive expectation of the future?

4. What does Romans 15:13 mean to you?

5. “Hope looks beyond a cure…a solution…an escape to an assurance from God that life has point and meaning in spite of disease etc.” How does this assurance give hope?

6. How can you access the promise of Romans 5:5?

7. How could Peter hope again after his denial of Jesus?

8. What was the source of Peter’s hope?

9. How does Peter’s experience give you hope?

10. “The love that hopes does not require answers and solutions in this life.” Explain.

The sign on the counter of the store made its point: “In God we trust. All others pay cash!” Even American currency, backed by the full faith and credit of the U.S. Government, has printed on it: In God We Trust. Who can we trust in addition to God?

“Love believes all things” or “always trusts.” The inference is that if you love someone you will “always believe in him.” (LB) Love is always ready to believe the best about people. This is not regarded as a virtue by most experienced people. To believe the best about people, to give them the benefit of the doubt, smacks of naiveté or gullibility. The more knowledge we have about human nature, the more we are inclined to be suspicious of people. Even Jesus did not trust himself to the crowds for he knew what was in a man. Knowing that we are all fallen creatures, inheritors of sin, we are only too well aware of our failings and how we can be disappointed in others. How do you reconcile these widely differing attitudes? Surely love is perceptive, able to recognize what is going on without being deceived. Yet love, says the apostle Paul, will always, i.e. generally, unless there is overwhelming evidence to the contrary, give the benefit of the doubt, because it can never assume that the worst is true.

Thomas, after the death of Jesus, assumed that the worst was true. He missed out on Jesus’ post-resurrection appearance to the other disciples. When his friends told him that they had seen the Lord, risen from the dead, he did not believe them. Why? These were trusted friends with whom he had spent the past three years. They were telling him about what they had experienced but he wasn’t buying it. He mistrusted them, and in so doing he did them an injustice. He did not think well of them. They had knowledge which he chose to reject. He was unable to love his friends by trusting them. Instead he rejected their testimony, and their integrity. By mistrusting them he distanced himself from them. Love identifies with others through trust, whereas mistrust backs away from others.

“Mistrust is all too well aware of the possibility of different interpretations of people’s actions, noting how quick we are to believe well or ill of people according to the way we want to think about them, and how we will then tend to ignore any contrary evidence. The mistrustful person takes pride in his or her knowledge and cleverness. He or she realizes that someone’s apparent virtue may be a sham; that one cannot simply infer the reality of someone’s moral state from the appearance he or she presents to the world…. Mistrust aims to secure itself against the possibility of being deceived, not by believing all things, but by believing nothing.” (Anthony Rudd)

We withhold judgment until we have more information. This is what Thomas does.

We are free to interpret evidence, data, information, clues, one way or another. The interpretation we make, the conclusions we draw, reveal what our fundamental outlook on life is. “The malicious person puts the worst construction on any actions; the mistrustful refuses to make any conclusion at all; but the one who loves is free to interpret the actions lovingly…The lover differs from the naïve or inexperienced person in that he or she is fully aware of all the possible interpretations that could be placed on anyone’s actions. Faced with this objective uncertainty, the lover chooses to believe, and by so doing reveals the love that is in him or her. The cynic, who has precisely the same objective knowledge, chooses not to believe, and thus reveals her mistrust.”

Kierkegaard claims that knowledge or experience of others is neutral. What we do with that knowledge or experience reveals our inclination. Belief or mistrust is a choice we make with the information we have. We all fear making a mistake – either by believing too well of a person, or believing too ill of a person. Juries in court cases have to make decisions about these things all the time. Imagine if we found ourselves in heaven and missed seeing someone we had expected to find there; or seeing with amazement a person whom we would have excluded, and became aware that what we thought might have been the very thing that would have excluded him made him superior to us! Love includes people more than it excludes. Love spends more time peopling heaven than condemning people to hell. Jesus said, “whoever is not against you is for you.”

Such a choice as to what to believe about a person is always a risk. Love is willing to take a risk with others. Scepticism, cynicism, or agnosticism, is the unwillingness to take risks. The person who will believe nothing, who will not believe in the good, begins to believe only in evil. “To believe nothing is the beginning of being evil, for it shows that one has no good in him.” (Kierkegaard, Works of Love) “Goodness is bound up with the willingness to trust, so the refusal to trust is a defiance of the good, and is therefore a turning to evil… Love, by contrast, believes all things; it puts the best construction on all actions. …Love believes that the good is still possible for anyone, even those who now seem to be the worst of people.” (Anthony Rudd, International Kierkegaard Commentary, Vol.16, p.124)

We inhabit a political and media culture of worldly-wise cynicism and suspicion of the motives of others. It would be true to say that we are brainwashed by the mantra to never trust others, to never believe what others say. Exposing corruption is necessary in our society. Such is our sinfulness, that if we didn’t fear being found out, we would be tempted to cut corners, pad tax deductions and expense accounts, accept bribes, and divert company funds to our own use. As a society we have laws because we cannot trust others. Yet we don’t want that attitude to marinate our hearts so that we are always denigrating and denying the good in others.

I have never forgotten the wisdom of a blacksmith, Arthur Thomas, I knew as a child, who worked on a gold dredge, repeating these words: “I hate those guys who criticize and minimize, those other guys whose enterprise has made them rise, above those guys who criticize and minimize.”

Since we cannot know everything about others, there is always room for alternative views of any phenomenon, and therefore room for generous as much as cynical interpretations. We can be self-deceived by our own suspicions. Always looking for ulterior motives in others leads us to mistrust everyone and damages the ability to form loving relationships. Many single people are afraid to make a commitment to another in marriage because they expect too much of a spouse. St. Thomas distanced himself from his friends by his mistrust of them. It took an experience of Jesus to overcome his mistrust.

Love always trusts. Love is not skeptical but trusting. Love is not agnostic but believing. Love trusts the experience of love in other people. We can choose whether we want to trust or mistrust in life. We begin life as children with a natural attitude of trust. We are taught to mistrust others through our childhood into adulthood. We are educated to be skeptical, to suspend belief until we see enough evidence to warrant it. When we have had our trust abused by someone we love it will take time for that trust to be restored. Love comes to us in Jesus, through the love of others, and invites us to trust, to believe again. To trust, to believe isn’t something we can just do, like snapping our fingers. We cannot just shut our eyes and wish to believe, like magic. To trust means being able to risk, being able to lean on someone bigger and better than yourself, who can support you.

Jesus came to Thomas, who was overwhelmed by the love of God, and said to him, “Because you have seen me, you have believed; blessed are those who have not seen and yet have believed.” The lover is a believer. If we know we are loved by God, we are able to trust God, and to trust others.

GUIDE FOR REFLECTION AND DISCUSSION

1. How can you believe the best about people when you know their failings? (Read John 2:24,25)

2. Read John 20:25. Why did Thomas not trust his friends?

3. What is the difference between the mistrustful person as Anthony Rudd describes him or her, and the lover?

4. How does fear of making a mistake about someone influence our attitude?

5. What criteria do you expect to be used to exclude people from heaven’s rewards, and do you expect to be surprised by who is honored?

6. Why is skepticism, cynicism, and agnosticism, an unwillingness to take risks?

7. “Goodness is bound up with the willingness to trust, so the refusal to trust is a defiance of the good, and is therefore a turning to evil.” What do you think of that statement?

8. How can we be self-deceived by our own suspicions of others?

9. What do you do when your trust in someone is betrayed?

10. How does knowing that we are loved by God, help us to trust?

The Medal of Honor, the Nation’s highest military decoration, was awarded posthumously to Marine Cpl. Jason Dunham. In April 2004 Dunham was leading a patrol in an Iraqi town near the Syrian border when an insurgent dropped a grenade into his vehicle. Dunham hurled himself on top of it, using his helmet to try to blunt the force of the blast. He was critically wounded in the explosion and died eight days later at Bethesda Naval Hospital. “His was a selfless act of courage to save his fellow Marines. He knew what he was doing. He wanted to save Marine’s lives from that grenade,” said Lance Cpl. Jason Sanders. Three of Dunham’s platoon mates with Kilo Company, 3^rd Battalion, 7^th Marines, suffered shrapnel wounds but survived. Jason Dunham was 22 years old.

The Apostle Paul gives us a fourfold series of absolutes: “love always protects, always trusts, always, hopes, always perseveres.” The sense is in the intention. We intend always to protect etc. even it is sometimes not always possible. Vows, while meant to be absolute, are not always possible to keep because of changing circumstances, e.g. we intend our marriage vows to be “until death do us part.” But we know that those vows are conditional on faithfulness, trust, and physical and emotional safety. Let me come back to that later.

“Love always protects.” The verb means to cover, to pass over in silence, to keep confidential. It is used to describe a roof. When we want to stop discussion of something we may say that we want to ‘put a lid on it.’ Love throws a cloak of silence over what is displeasing in another person. “Hatred stirs up dissension, but love covers over all wrongs.” “Love covers over a multitude of sins.” Love finds a way to shelter the wrongdoer from exposure and condemnation. This is how God has treated us. “Blessed is he whose transgressions are forgiven, whose sins are covered.”

The word for ‘making atonement’ in the Hebrew: kaphar, means ‘to cover.’ The atoning sacrifice of Jesus on the Cross was the fulfillment of the purpose of the Day of Atonement celebrated each year in the Temple, when the sins of the people were covered by the blood of the offering in the Holy of Holies. Jesus was both the High Priest and the Sacrifice to take away our sins by covering them, ‘making atonement’, and protecting us from condemnation. What God in Christ has done for us is meant to instruct us to do for others.

This, therefore, is how we should treat one another. By extending to others our protection, our generosity, our forgiveness, we can enjoy it ourselves. Forgive as we have been forgiven. Loving one another in this way shows that we have the root of the matter in us – we have assimilated the nature of grace. We love one another deeply by not exposing the frailties of others. We are willing to make allowances, to overlook minor infractions. We are reluctant to drag the faults of others into the light of day. “Do not judge, or you too will be judged. For in the same way you judge others, you will be judged, and with the measure you use, it will be measured to you.”

Nowhere is this more illustrated than in the incident of the woman taken in the act of adultery. This describes the “got-you” mentality which is characteristic of the “caught in the act” vigilantes. Jesus bowed down and wrote with his finger on the ground. He who knew everything, knew also what the scribes and the Pharisees knew, before they told him. They soon discovered her guilt, which was easy since her sin was open. They also discovered a new sin, of which they were guilty, by trying to ensnare Jesus with their question. But Jesus ignored them and wrote with his finger on the ground. Why did he avert his gaze? Why did he write with his finger on the ground? Did he sit there like a judge who listens attentively to the story of the accusers, who, listening, bows down and jots down the principal points so that he may not forget them, and judge strictly? Was the woman’s guilt the only thing which was noted by the Lord? Or did he write with his finger in the dust in order to erase it and forget it? There stood the sinner, surrounded by those even more guilty, who loudly accused her, but love bowed down and did not hear the accusation, which passed over his head into the air. He wrote with his finger in order to blot out what he knew: sin discovers a multitude of sins, but love covers a multitude of sins. People who look for sin are sure to find it. Love does not look for sin. Jesus tells them to look into their own hearts: “If anyone of you is without sin, let him be the first to throw a stone at her.” Was he writing their sins on the ground and then erasing them? When they have all left leaving only the woman standing there with Jesus he asks, “Woman, where are they? Has no one condemned you?” “No one, sir” she said. “Then neither do I condemn you. Go now and leave your life of sin.” Her sin was covered. He would make atonement for it. But she had to change her behavior.

Soren Kierkegaard argues that love protects by silence, by mitigating explanation and by forgiveness. Love always protects by silence, by not gossiping about our neighbor’s faults, for in the retelling of them the truth is often embroidered until they bear little resemblance to reality. Love always protects through mitigating explanations. Every event, every word, every act, everything, can be explained in numerous ways. The lover will choose the most mitigating explanation. We are not called to be judges or detectives seeking to uncover guilt. How many lives have been ruined by drawing the wrong conclusions about events, and making the wrong interpretation of an action. We don’t know all the circumstances or the motives involved in the lives of others. Love seeks a favorable interpretation to protect the innocent. Love protects by forgiveness. God loves us by blotting out our sin. It is forgiven and forgotten. “You have put all my sins behind your back.” The lover forgives, forgets, blots out sin, by turning to the one he forgives, and in so doing he cannot see what lies behind his back. He turns his back on the sin and goes forward leaving it behind him.

Here is where we must revisit the absolute intention of “always” protecting others. While this is the intention, our actions must be qualified by events. Just as we must almost never say “never”, we must almost never say “always.” It is important that we do not press this teaching to the point of covering up a heinous crime. I am sure that St. Paul here is not advocating, that out of a misplaced sense of loyalty, perpetrators of violence should be protected. I can well remember a knock on the door one night, when I was living in Orange Park, and finding my neighbor, Mrs C., in tears because her grown daughter had threatened to bring charges against her father for sexual abuse. While she had been only too well aware of his abusive behavior over the years, she had hidden it, denied it, and put her daughters and neighborhood children (including our own), at risk. Love does not protect criminal behavior at the expense of the innocent and vulnerable. Love does not enable or excuse destructive and irresponsible behavior. Love delights in the truth, it does not encourage lies and deceit by covering it up. Organizations should not protect their employees at the expense of the public, whether it is embezzlement at the management level, or dishonesty at any level. The American Roman Catholic hierarchy has discovered how high a price it has had to pay for protecting priestly perpetrators of sexual abuse by covering up their crimes over the years. The abuse of power is never to be protected.

“The Lives of Others” won an Oscar in 2007 for the best Foreign Language Film. It depicts the work of the Stasi (State Security) in East Germany under the communist regime in 1984. Captain Weisler is assigned to conduct surveillance of a celebrated writer and actress couple, Georg Dreyman and Christa-Maria Sieland. Their apartment is bugged and Weisler listens in on their every word from the attic. As he does so, he discovers that the reason for the surveillance is to uncover evidence against Dreyman so that he might be denounced and removed, allowing a Minister in the communist government to seduce Christa-Maria. Weisler is drawn into the stimulating, intellectual world of this artistic couple, and develops a sympathy for them. When Dreyman writes a controversial article criticizing the government, which is published under a pseudonym in West Germany, Weisler covers up evidence that would incriminate the author. The plot explores the abuse of power and its effects on the lives of the protagonists. Captain Weisler pays a price for protecting Dreyman. He is demoted to the lowest job in State Security – steaming open letters in a basement office. After the Berlin wall comes down, the two Germany’s are reunited and the records of the Stasi are made available to the public, Dreyman discovers how Weisler protected him and expresses his gratitude in a unique way.

Love always protects. God throws his covering over us in the atonement of Jesus on the Cross. “Therefore there is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus, because through Jesus Christ the law of the Spirit of life set me free from the law of sin and death.”

GUIDE FOR REFLECTION AND DISCUSSION

1. How do these terms affect you: protect, confidential, cover, shelter? What are their opposites?

2. What is the significance of the Atonement for you personally and as a model for your relationships?

3. How do you apply Matthew 7:1,2 in your life?

4. Read John 8:1-11. What do you think Jesus was writing on the ground?

5. How do you balance the truth of John 8:7 with the need to maintain moral standards?

6. What is the most difficult for you: protecting others by silence, mitigating explanations or forgiveness? Why?

7. When do you know that protecting someone puts others at risk?

8. Why has the term “cover up” become synonymous with criminal behavior?

9. How can love protect the most vulnerable: the baby in the womb, the disabled, and the elderly?

10. How is God our ultimate protector? How does that make you feel?

Schadenfreude is the German word which describes our malicious enjoyment of the mishaps or misfortunes of others. Schadenfreude is part of our culture. Every one of us experiences schadenfreude. It is intrinsic to every sport. We love it when our golfing buddies hit their balls in the bunkers or miss their putts. We inwardly applaud when our tennis opponent double-faults or hits into the net. We cheer when the opposing quarterback in football fumbles the ball. We thrill to see cars crash in the Daytona 500. Much of the fun in sports comes from schadenfreude: malicious enjoyment of the mishaps or misfortunes of others. It is central to the slapstick comedy of the Three Stooges, and many cartoon series such as Tom and Jerry or the Roadrunner.

News organizations love schadenfreude. Nothing excites the public more than breaking news about the latest scandal amongst celebrities or politicians. We secretly rejoice to see self-righteous leaders fall from grace. We gloat when prominent and powerful politicians on the opposition party are caught in crimes and misdemeanors. We love scandals because they give us something to be disgusted about, and to make us feel so morally superior. Other people’s sins make us look virtuous. Other people’s misfortunes make our lot easier to bear. They put our problems into perspective.

We are delighted when our enemies suffer. Nothing gives us greater joy than seeing our opponents get their comeuppance. When we are engaged in a battle we are relieved when the enemy is killed or destroyed in some way, shape or form. We feel justified when people whom we loathe, because they have hurt us or our loved ones, drop dead.

But love cannot delight in evil. Though we may have to go to war, though many people may be killed, and families lose loved ones, we cannot delight in it. It is the sadist who enjoys seeing pain inflicted on others. No matter how much the punishment fits the crime we can take no joy in executions or incarcerations. While we may support the free market and the risks associated with investment, we do not delight in downturns, personnel reductions, and bankruptcies.

Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. When love enters the picture the whole equation alters. When it is our friend who falls from grace, we are dismayed. When our beloved encounters adversity, when bad things happen to her, when the evil day comes for her in her life, when the medical diagnosis is poor, we are saddened and shocked. It is impossible to delight in the misfortunes of those you love, no matter what they have done. It is hard to rejoice in the downfall of leaders, if you wish them well. Love recognizes that “there but for the grace of God go I,” – or as John Donne observed, “any man’s death diminishes me, because I am involved in Mankind; and therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls; it tolls for thee.”

There is no more poignant story in the Old Testament than that of King David’s handsome son, Absalom. In his father’s old age Absalom began to court the popularity of the Israelites. We are told that “he stole the hearts of the men of Israel.” In time he gathered enough of a following to initiate a conspiracy against his father. He proclaimed himself king in Hebron, just twenty miles south of Jerusalem. David fled from the city with his household and royal guard. “The whole countryside wept aloud as all the people passed….David continued up the Mount of Olives weeping as he went; his head was covered and he was barefoot. All the people with him covered their heads too and were weeping as they went up.” Absalom had turned many of the people against his father who could not believe that his son would do such a thing.

Conscious of David’s love for his rebel son, his military commanders: Joab, Abishai and Ittai, persuaded the king to remain behind in the camp. His last words to his generals as the army marched out to battle were: “Be gentle with the young man Absalom for my sake.” The battle in the Gilead oak woods, after 20,000 casualties, closed with Absalom’s hair getting tangled in a tree, and his mule leaving him hanging in midair. Joab defied his royal master by killing Absalom instead of capturing him alive. When David heard of it he was overcome with sorrow. “O my son Absalom! My son, my son Absalom! If only I had died instead of you – O Absalom, my son, my son!”

David was only too well aware of the truth – that he had aided and abetted the rebellion by turning a blind eye to Absalom’s ambitions over the years. He was also aware of his own sins that had contributed to the moral decay in the court. His mourning for his son was also a mourning for the culture that he had allowed to flourish, where abuse, anger, adultery, incest, and murder had been tolerated in his own household, and by himself. He came face to face with his own culpability, and the cost in human lives that resulted. He could not delight in the destruction of Absalom’s army because he knew the truth of his own negligence as a father and a ruler.

Love rejoices with the truth. One truth, one reality, is that every one of us sins. “If we claim to be without sin, we deceive ourselves and the truth is not in us.” We don’t delight in the downfall of others when we know our own hearts. We are guilty by association. We have to admit we can be entertained by their sick and scandalous behavior. The media provides its audience with a menu of immorality and violence.

Love rejoices with the whole truth, not partial truth. Love knows the difference between a momentary mistake, and a persistent pattern of immoral behavior. Love does not blind us to the lifetime achievements of a person because of the fact of a single error. Love has the perspective to see the whole truth, and does not obsess on one sin as though it negated the rest of life. Love rejoices with the truth, the reality, of redemption – that Christ has come to forgive us and give us a new start when we repent and turn to him in faith. Love rejoices with the truth that failure is not final.

Love rejoices with the truth that God is personal. Jesus said, “I am the truth.” We can rejoice that Christ is the truth, for he shows us the reality of human life that is pure in heart – sincere, unsullied by evil, full of integrity. We can rejoice with the truth of his life. There is something to rejoice about – we need not be cynical or despairing of life, of goodness, of truth.

Love rejoices with the good news that Jesus has triumphed over evil on the Cross. We can rejoice that if he is victorious over evil we can share in that victory with him. Evil is the antithesis of the truth. Jesus came to save us from evil. We cannot delight in evil and rejoice with the truth. We have to choose between the two. That choice is an act of faith, a decision that is critical for our lives. Christ can take men or women at their worst, steeped in wickedness and sin, and still deliver them from evil. That is why we can rejoice with the truth of the Gospel.

Love acts on the power of the truth that is in Jesus to change lives. Love does not delight in other people’s failings, but rejoices with the truth that saves us. “There but for the grace of God go I!” Love is the grace of God that reaches out to us in Jesus. When we receive him, and live with him, and are empowered by his Spirit, we have his truth within us. That gift of love is cause for rejoicing.

GUIDE FOR REFLECTION AND DISCUSSION

1. How susceptible are you to schadenfreude? Be honest! What about the media?

2. How does love alter your attitude to those who fall from grace and encounter adversity?

3. What do you think of John Donne’s famous words?

4. How did David react to the defeat and death of his son? Why did he not rejoice in his victory?

5. What is the truth of 1 John 1:8?

6. What truths can we rejoice in?

7. What did Jesus mean when he said that he was the Truth? (John 14:6)

8. How true is ‘There but the grace of God go I’?

9. How can the truth of the Gospel liberate us from malice?

10. How can love bring perpetrators of evil to just-ice and rejoice in the truth?

Love keeps no record of wrongs (NIV). Love is not resentful (RSV). Love holds no grudges (LB, 1 Corinthians 13:5). The verb Paul uses here means ‘to calculate.’ William Barclay says that the word “is an accountant’s word. It is the word that is used for entering up an item in a ledger so that it will not be forgotten.” Lewis Smedes writes that “Resentment is our memory of the painful, angry past.” It is hard to forget and to forgive.

Grudges can divide families and friends. I know of siblings who have fallen out over how their family estate was managed. Greed has set one against the other. No amount of money can be so important as to alienate one from another. “Someone in the crowd said to Jesus, ‘Teacher, tell my brother to divide the inheritance with me.’” His brother may have been executor of the estate, and he was asking Jesus for a decision in his own favor, to intervene in the family dispute. Jesus will have nothing to do with it. “Man, who appointed me a judge or an arbiter between you?” He came to bring men to God not to bring property to men. He goes on to warn the crowd about the dangers of greed. In the parable of the Rich Fool he teaches that we can’t take our possessions with us, and that we will be held accountable for our stewardship of what we have been given.

Inheritance can foster much resentment between family members. But love can prevent and heal resentment. Nowhere is this truth better expounded than in the Parable of the Prodigal Son. The younger son asked his father to give him his share of the estate. So the father divided his property between his sons. The younger son squandered his wealth in wild living. When he came to the end of his resources he decided to return home and beg his father’s forgiveness, and ask for a job as one of his employees. He did not ask to be reinstated as a son or to be given any preferential treatment. His father, however, had kept no account of his son’s wrongs. All he wanted was his son back safe and sound. Perhaps one of the most poignant descriptions in Scripture is that of the father watching out for the son. “While he was still a long way off, his father saw him and was filled with compassion for him; he ran to his son, threw his arms around him and kissed him.”

Love covers a multitude of sins. Love keeps no records of wrongs. Love is not resentful. Love holds no grudges. It was more important to the father that his beloved son had returned home safely than that his money was safe. He valued his relationship of love with his son more than his wealth. He was not going to let his son’s foolishness get in the way of his love. For the older son it was much more difficult. He kept a record of wrongs. He resented his brother’s return, and acceptance. He begrudged his father’s joy over his brother’s safe return. He did not love his brother. He loved his own record more. He reminded his father of his brother’s sins and contrasted them with his own worth. He wants his father to compare their scores in his favor.

When we are confronted with our own shortcomings we defend ourselves by dredging up past offenses by our accuser. We have kept record of them in our memories so that we can produce them when needed. We have to feel more virtuous than others so that we can maintain our self-esteem and avoid being put at a disadvantage. So we play the game of tit for tat, exchanging accusations until we exhaust the goodwill we have for one another.

Not only is this destructive in marriages and families, but it is also devastating amongst ethnic groups and nations. Hitler and his followers resented Germany’s defeat in World War I, and the humiliating terms of the Treaty of Versailles. The memories of their losses festered until they were able to avenge themselves in the Second World War. Similarly today, the resentment of the Palestinians over the loss of their land in the wars of 1947 and 1967, feeds the hatred of Israel today. The loss of power by one ethnic group, tribe or nation, is resented by their descendants, until the opportunity comes to get even through yet another war or revolution.

We keep score because it makes us feel superior to the person or ethnic group we resent. We enjoy feeling noble and worthy as the decent person or group who was wrongly hurt. War is waged to redress grievances, and to bring those who have injured us or our countrymen to account. We want to hurt them for what they have done to us in the past.

This is the state of the world today where conflict rules. Group is warring against group because of past grievances and present resentments. The demand for reparations, the revisions of history, the desire to fight old battles and blackmail the winners, and jealousy of the successful is popular. Imagine if the British still nursed the grievance of losing the American colonies, and schemed to get them back? Imagine the Confederacy still wanting its independence? You can’t live in the past. Healthy people move on and make a life for themselves rather than continuing to fight their ancestors’ battles. Children move on to fulfill their own dreams rather than depending on inheriting the assets of their parents to make it easier for them. Christians who have accepted the need for their own forgiveness, don’t hold others hostage to judgment. They let the dead bury their own dead. They want nothing to do with vendettas. For our own peace of mind we have to let go of our resentment against those who have hurt us or our loved ones. Despite our painful memories we don’t want to remain hostages to the past. Miroslav Volf has written eloquently on how to go about this in ‘The End of Memory: Remembering Rightly in a Violent World’. See also Marie Daouda’s new book on colonialism and culture, Not Your Victim.

Love lets the past die. Love does not seek for justice even though it is in the right. Love wants to wipe the slate clean and start all over again. What is important to love is that it is possible to make a new beginning. “Accounts may go unsettled; differences remain unsolved; ledgers stay unbalanced. Conflicts between people’s memories of how things happened are not cleared up; the past stays muddled. Only the future matters. Love’s power does not make fussy historians. Love prefers to tuck all the loose ends of past rights and wrongs in the bosom of forgiveness – and pushes us into a new start. Letting go of the past and beginning here, now, where we are, to move again toward a reconciled life is one of the hardest things any human being is ever asked to do. Love is the power to do that.”

“Bear with each other and forgive whatever grievances you may have against one another. Forgive as the Lord forgave you. And over all these virtues put on love, which binds them all together in perfect unity.”

Salvation in Christ results in the healing of painful memories. It is learning to forget what other people did to us and those we love. The power to forget is the power of the Cross. Jesus said, “Father forgive them, for they know not what they do.” Love is the power to forgive, to tear up the scorecard, to be reconciled, to leave the final accounting to the judgment and mercy of God. God settled accounts with us on the Cross. Let us leave our wrongs, our resentments, our grudges at the foot of the Cross of Christ. The love of God in Christ conquers all. The Gospel is God’s answer to the ills of the world.

GUIDE FOR REFLECTION AND DISCUSSION

1. ‘Resentment is our memory of the painful, angry past.’ (Smedes) How can love expunge those memories?

2. How have you dealt with grudges in your family or amongst your friends?

3. Read Luke 12:13-21. How did Jesus respond to a family feud?

4. What does the Parable of the Prodigal Son (Luke 15:11-32) have to teach us about keeping no record of wrongs?

5. How can we forgive the wrongs done us and our ancestors?

6. ‘Only the future matters.’ How does love give you the power to move on?

7. Read Colossians 3:13,14. What can you apply this exhortation to in your life?

8. How can you learn to forget?

9. What relevance does this Word of God have to the conflicts in the world?

10. ‘God settled accounts with us on the Cross.’ Explain.

I had put up with his dominating, know-it-all attitude long enough. Every time I met him he lectured me on how to do my job. He was considered one of the most powerful men in town, and people were intimidated by him. He was physically commanding because of his height, and literally looked down on you as he spoke. Every church board meeting he found something or someone to criticize. This time he went too far, and attacked our children’s minister, who was doing a great job. Under his withering diatribe she burst into tears. I should have adjourned the meeting and asked to see the antagonist privately and had it out with him. Instead, in my anger, I publicly rebuked him, and told him in no uncertain terms that I was tired of his high-jacking the board meetings and that if he could not say something positive to balance his negative comments he should remain silent.

One of our biggest temptations is to react defensively under pressure. “Be angry but do not sin, do not let the sun go on down on your anger, and give no opportunity to the devil.” The devil tempts us to lose it, to react impulsively to say and do the wrong thing. Apparently Saul of Tarsus was like that before he was converted and became St. Paul. As a persecutor of the first Christians he breathed “threats and murder against the disciples of the Lord.” So he knows what he is talking about when he writes, ‘Love is not easily angered’ (1 Corinthians 13:5). ‘Love is not touchy’ (JBP). ‘Love is not irritable’ (NRSV). Love is not short-tempered. “Love puts a long fuse on our emotional bombs.” Love does not blow up at the least provocation. Love is calm under pressure. Love accepts responsibility for how we react to others. Love takes responsibility for how we feel and how we handle unjustified aggravation. We cannot be responsible for how others behave, but we can control how we respond to them. We do not blame how we behave on other people. We do not see ourselves as victims.

Life does not always go smoothly. Interruptions will occur. Other people’s agendas and needs will compete with ours. We do not plan each moment of our day as though we have complete freedom to do what we alone want to do. We live in community. Other events, accidents, emergencies, telephone calls, emails, requests for our attention, will occur. We are not lone rangers, flying solo, with no one to please but ourselves. Love recognizes the context, the environment, the life situations, in which we live, and makes provision for them, so that we are not frustrated when we are confronted with unexpected demands upon us.

Self-absorption and perfectionism sets us up to be easily angered when our needs are frustrated by the realities of life. The goal-setting, highly planned, purpose-driven life that does not allow for the needs of others, results in irritability. Richard A. Swenson’s book, “Margin: Restoring Emotional, Physical, Financial, and Time Reserves to Overloaded Life” reminds us that we need to allow for margins in our time and financial management lest we over-budget or over-schedule ourselves and there is no flexibility in our lives.

Irritability leads to anger. We get angry at every small obstacle that slows us down or gets in our way. We get angry at the telephone when it rings. Don’t answer it. We get angry at people who ask us to participate in another yet function. Just decline – politely. We get angry at the church or charity that asks us for financial support. Do what you can. We get angry at the person ahead of us in the checkout counter. Read the tabloids. They are hilarious. We get angry at the driver in the car in front of us who doesn’t seem to know what she is doing. Listen to the radio. We get angry at the slow service in a restaurant. A diner once asked a waiter, “Do you tip waiters in this restaurant?” “Yes sir,” he replied. “Then tip me because I’ve been waiting so long!” We think, if only these people would know how important our time was they would be more considerate of us!!!!!

We are so self-centered that we think the world should revolve around us and our needs so that we do not have to wait or be slowed down. We get frustrated by others not doing what we think they should. Sometimes we let our anger show. The mask slips, we lose control, and we let them have it. We become aggressive. We may lash out at others by letting them know how inconvenienced we are. Those who have little control revert to violence. Frustration turns to hostility, which expresses itself in violent behavior.

How does love prevent this problem of irritability and frustration?

Love recognizes the value of anger. Anger is not the problem. Anger shows that we care about something important. Anger shows that we are not indifferent to injustice. Anger may be justified. “In your anger do not sin.” Sin occurs when anger is prolonged and unjustified. God gets angry and has good reason to be so. When God looks at the world and all the sin, evil, and suffering caused by so many hateful people, he has a right to be angry. None of us is guiltless. We are all sinners, who need to take responsibility, repent and change our ways. But God is described as being “compassionate and gracious, slow to anger, abounding in love. He will not always accuse, nor will he harbor his anger forever; he does not treat us as our sins deserve or repay us according to our iniquities.” God gives us a lifetime to change.

Love calls us to be “slow to anger.” Jesus models this for us in his trial before the high priest. He is struck on the face by one of the officials. That is provocation. Jesus responded by asking a question: “If I said something wrong, testify as to what is wrong. But if I spoke the truth why did you strike me?” Jesus did not immediately blow up at the provocation. He did not take it lying down either. In a calm manner he confronted his tormentor with the injustice of his action. He did not want to give the devil a foothold by allowing anger to control him, even though he would have been justified in responding with anger. We too can respond under provocation with the same request: “Why did you say that or do that? What did I do or say to deserve that?” Jesus gives us the example of bearing up under the pain of unjust suffering. “When they hurled their insults at him, he did not retaliate; when he suffered, he made no threats. Instead he entrusted himself to him who judges justly.”

Non-retaliation, restraining our desire to blow up, to pay back, to ventilate our frustrations, to express our anger in aggressive behavior, to lose our temper, can only happen when we admit that we have no power to help ourselves, and that losing control, and indulging our desire for revenge will only make matters worse. Instead, let God, who is sovereign over all things, take care of our antagonist in his time. “Do not repay anyone evil for evil. Be careful to do what is right in the eyes of everybody. If it is possible, as far as it depends on you, live at peace with everyone. Do not take revenge, my friends, but leave room for God’s wrath, for it is written ‘It is mine to avenge, I will repay,’ says the Lord… Do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good.”

Love enables you to see into the heart of the one who is harassing you. Love sees the anxiety, the fear, the pain, the defensive behavior, of the person who is controlled by anger. Love gives you the patience and kindness to endure the provocation of the person who is self-seeking, and who wants to be in control. Love pities the person who is out of control and is making a fool of himself. Love bites his tongue so that he does not say something that he might regret later. Love listens to hear what is not being said, what is behind what is being said. Love gives you the words to respond when you are confronted with bad temper.

The elder son in the parable of the prodigal son got angry when his brother returned and his father threw a feast to celebrate his homecoming. He refused to go into the house and blew up at his father: “Look! All these years I’ve been slaving for you and never disobeyed your orders. Yet you never gave me even a young goat so I could celebrate with my friends. But when this son of yours [note: he doesn’t refer to him as his brother] who has squandered your property with prostitutes comes home you kill the fattened calf for him!”

His father could have given him a dressing down, he could have been irritated and frustrated by his older son’s petulance and selfishness, but instead, in love, he reached out to the sibling, who was hurt by the attention given to his younger brother. His father affirmed him and explained why he was doing what he was doing: “My son, you are always with me, and everything I have is yours. But we had to celebrate and be glad, because this brother of yours was dead and is alive again; he was lost and is found.”

If we are easily angered, if we are quick-tempered, if we have a touchy disposition, if we routinely get irritated, we are like this older brother, sulking outside the door because he is not the center of attention. It reveals a defect of character, a disease of the heart, that is a product of our sinful nature. It needs to be repented of, and healed by an influx of the love of Christ. We cannot change through trying to be better in our own strength. Only Christ can change us. This irritability has to be neutralized and overcome by the medicine of Christ and his transforming power. It is his love that we need, that is given by the infilling of the Holy Spirit.

GUIDE FOR REFLECTION AND DISCUSSION

1. How calm are you under pressure?

2. Can you take responsibility for your feelings or do you blame others for them?

3. Why is the perfectionist, the goal-oriented achiever prone to irritability?

4. What causes you to get angry?

5. What is the connection between anger and violence?

6. ‘Love recognizes the value of anger?’ Explain.

7. Read 1 Peter 2:19,23 and Romans 12:17-21. What does the example of Jesus and the teaching of Paul tell us about love?

8. ‘Love enables you to see into the heart of the one who is harassing you.’ What do you see?

9. Read Luke 15:28-32. How did the father deal with his older son?

10. How can Christ change us from being easily angered?